Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/49

36 Connecticut were almost all foreigners, those of South Carolina natives of that soil. A sixth part of the voters of South Carolina are unable to read the ballot they east. According to the census of 1850, in the year 1849, the South paid $2,717,771 for public schools; the North $6,834,388. The South had 976,966 children at school; the North, 3,106,961.

The South had 2,867,567 native whites over twenty years of age; of these 532,605 were unable even to read—more than eighteen per cent. In the North there were 6,649,001 native whites over twenty, and only 278,575 thus illiterate—not four and one-fourth per cent. In 1850, there were in the United States 2,800 newspapers and other periodicals, from the daily to the quarterly, issuing annually about 422,700,000 copies, to about 5,000,000 subscribers. Of these journals, 716 were in the slave States—including those printed in the capital of America— and 2,084 in the free States. The circulation of Southern periodicals, however, is limited: their average is not more than one-half or two-thirds that of the northern journals.

Almost all who are eminent in science, literature, or art—naturalists, historians, poets, preachers—are Northern men. The Southern pulpit produces nothing remarkable but evidences of the Divinity of Slavery.

The respective military power of the democratic and despotic institutions was abundantly tested in the revolutionary war. From 1775 to 1783, the free population of the slave States was 1,307,549; there were also 657,527 slaves. New England contained 673,215 free persons, and 3,886 slaves. During the nine years of that war, the slave States furnished the continental army with 58,421 regular soldiers; New England alone furnished 118,380 regulars. The slave States had also 12,719 militia-men, and New England 46,048 militia-men.

After the battle of Bunker Hill, when the States in Congress were called on to furnish soldiers. South Carolina, in consequence of her "peculiar institutions," asked that hers might remain at home. In 1779 (March 29th) a committee of Congress reported that "the State of South Carolina is unable to make any effectual effort, with militia,